The Road to Shangri-La

28 July 2009

Very excitingly, we managed to do laundry in the Lhasa hotel, which makes jeans bearable amidst 9 nights of bush camping. Dinner on a rooftop, some frantic souvenir shopping, and drinks in the Dunya bar to say farewell to the six who have now left us, and thence to the hotel internet for some downloading, some uploading, and some unsolicited Chinese porn.

Currently on the road to Shangri-La (seriously). Long days, but with the extra space it's really quite comfortable. The scenery changed drastically as soon as we put Lhasa behind us, from the high plateau steppe laden with yaks, to the current Green Green Hills of, well, Eastern Tibet. Deep, steep valleys covered in towering pines and deciduous trees, with a really reasonable sized river running through it. Camped last night on said river, in what appeared to be a nice enough spot...until whilst wandering about in search of someplace to wee, Louise stumbled upon our own perfect little beach...pristine soft white sand, blue-ish water, rocks for the boys to throw and even a few scorpions to poke. Tropical paradise. After dinner we had a Georgian-wine soaked bonfire on the sand.

However, since our blissful evening on the previously mentioned beach (for reasons too complicated to be witty except to me, now christened Ko Wee Wee), we've had some weather issues. In short, it is raining. And has been for the last three days. On the plus side, we've been involuntarily upgraded to hotels the last two nights—the first one, in Markham, was fine and some rooms even had hot water. Last night, in Deqin, not quite so lovely...Amy & Debbie preferred sleeping bags to the saffron-tinged sheets, and David and I made the acquaintance of what is the largest spider I have ever seen. He lived on our curtains, though he is currently and happily deceased. Deqin is described as a charmingly wild west sort of place in the hopelessly upbeat Lonely Planet (which I have come to believe only likes places that make Camden New Jersey look salubrious). I can only say that in the rain? Not my favourite part of the journey. But still, a bed is a bed, and not a soaked tent, and we did have a good meal out, and semi-cool beers. Still better than being at work.

On a personal note, I haven't enjoyed the last few days of driving as much as the rest of the contents of this truck. Mainly because I have a healthy respect for mountain roads, and also a perfectly rational rrational fear of dying on them. Precarious, dodgy, crumbly, narrow, un-safety-railed roads, overhung with boulders which appear to be attached to said mountains by the geological equivalent of dental floss. Vanessa tells me that the road is the most dangerous one in China, with rockfalls every week. The Chinese Army is posted along it to clear out falls (and bodies, one assumes), as emergency services in China consists entirely of the army—they are the firefighters, emergency workers, paramedics, etc.

Have spent a good portion of my time with my eyes closed, huddled into a corner, damning the retarded boys who take every pee break as an opportunity to throw boulders down the sheer vertical drops for fun. Am beginning to suspect that we will never leave these mountains, that we will instead spend the next three months edging past buses of Chinese people—who seem more interested in photographing us than noting that they are 2 inches from the edge of a 15,000 foot drop—as punishment for some crime in a previous life. Karma hates me.

Somewhere on the Highway of Hell, we've left Tibet proper and entered into Yunnan Province, which is home to 50+ ethnic minorities, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and the road out of China to Laos.